Silverlight to support H.264, AAC

Follow-up to <video> and Flash from [Ux]

Microsoft has announced that Silverlight will be supporting AAC audio and H.264 video. With regard to my previous entry about the video tag, this will make it even harder for Theora and can only consolidate H.264 as the current codec of choice. The announcement comes as no surprise to industry experts, but this move proves that MS is aggressively going after online video in a big way, but I’m not sure anyone really wins – based on browser/OS install base Silverlight may become more of a threat than the video tag would have been.

I’ve also been thinking a little more about Chrome – given that YouTube is part of Google it’s likely that when Chrome supports the video tag, the embedded codec(s) Google chooses could have a huge impact. Considering that H.264 is already being used on YouTube, perhaps that would be the default choice?

Steven Carpenter : 09 Sep 2008 21:13 |  Tags: Flash Rich Media Silverlight Video |  Comments (2) |  Report a problem